Ice crisis hits Oregon fisheries

FLORENCE, Ore. – The only fish buyer left this small, coastal community in July, and left behind an aging, near-defunct ice machine that no one wants to run.

The buyer’s departure could mean the end of the Florence fishery some day – but no place to buy ice shuts the industry down now, fishermen say. Without a means of keeping fish fresh – a typical load of ice for a small boat is two tons – there’s no point in dropping a net.

“No ice, no fishing,” skipper Jerry Dillon told the Eugene Register-Guard newspaper.

The California-based Carvalho company had operated on the port-owned dock since 2000, before pulling out in July after two profitless years. No one has volunteered to take over the money-losing ice venture, so fishermen have turned to the Port of Siuslaw for help.

But the port balked, arguing it isn’t government’s place to subsidize a private and failing industry.

Now, the entire community is in the throes of a debate over whether to keep fishing alive in Florence, a town that relies on its historic identity to draw tourists.

Fishermen are circulating petitions aimed at pressuring the port into solving the ice problem one way or another. Mayor Alan Burns also wrote a letter to the port this week.

Port commissioners say they hope to work out a compromise, whether that means buying a smaller ice machine or trucking the product in from somewhere else.

“We need the fishery. You guys need the ice,” Commissioner John Scott told fishermen at a packed meeting this week. “There shouldn’t be a conflict here.”

To get ice now, fishermen either have to detour to Newport or Coos Bay before they start fishing, or they actually moor at a different port.

In most ports, ice is a “loss leader,” a product seafood buyers sell to establish a relationship with fishermen so they can make money off the purchase of fish.

The conflict is beginning to play out on other parts of the coast as well, said Onno Husing, executive director of the nonprofit Oregon Coastal Zone Management Association.

Port Orford just lost its local ice provider. Winchester Bay’s Salmon Harbor gets its ice from Charleston, but its source in Coos Bay is likely to close. And fishermen in Newport are mulling the idea of buying a community ice machine to be free of fickle ice suppliers.

“There’s an ice crisis,” Husing said.